Rutland Water to Greetham circuit, from Exton
Walked by Sally and Richard, 29th March 2014.
About 12.5 miles of walking (5 hours); 5 miles progress on Viking Way.
Click here for all our photos from this walk.
This was our first proper walk on the Viking Way, almost a year after we reached the end of the Hereward Way in Oakham. It was not the most exciting day's walk I have ever done, but the villages were pretty and a diversion to Fort Henry provided an added bonus at the end. JordanWalks seems to talk all too frequently about walks that we did as a break from the pressures of work, but I'd surpassed myself on this occasion; I was desperate to get out walking! We left home around 7.45am, and 90 minutes later we'd parked on the Green in the delightful village of Exton. It was dry all day, with hazy sunshine.
After photographing Exton's picturesqueness, we headed south across fields, towards Whitwell and Rutland Water, with views back towards Exton and its prominent Church spire. We had spring flowers, hedgerows bursting into leaf or blossom, and birds - not all of which we recognised - for company. The path is shared with the "Rutland Round" and was mostly well-signposted, with just one exception where we might have missed a left turn through a gate, because the post on which the sign was placed had fallen down. However the path is clearly quite well walked, so the route was clear from others' footprints (on this occasion through mud!). We met a number of other walkers and as we approached the village of Whitwell there were several tractors out ploughing.
Whitwell is another pretty village. It's tiny and twinned with ... Paris! After photographing the amusing "pissoir" sign in the grounds of the Noel Arms we crossed the main road, and meandered our way past thatched cottages and the little Church to join the road down to Rutland Water.
The reservoir was attractive as we approached it, glimmering in the hazy sunshine, but I can't say I like the place much close-up. Even 40 years after it was created, the landscape still feels artificial, with expensive parking (the reason why we started our walk in Exton!), tacky refreshment kiosks, tarmacked paths and lycra-clad cyclists. We walked down to the reservoir and watched the ducks; they're OK and I got some atmospheric photographs.
We retraced our steps to Whitwell and Exton and continued to the north, passing a small private cemetery (created when the Earls of Gainsborough, who own the Exton Estate, converted to Roman Catholicism) and a farm yard, and emerging onto a broad gravel estate road next to a field of oil seed rape. We'd expected fewer people in this section but we were wrong - this appears to be the most popular route to Fort Henry and there were lots of other people about, including a group of "nordic walkers". I would like at this point to emphasise that I use my walking poles to protect my gammy knees, not as a means of increasing my fitness in their own right.
The track to Fort Henry veered to the right, but we were still on hard estate roads, and when at one point we followed what we believed to be the route of the Viking Way across a field, we found no way out at the far end so had to retrace our steps. The countryside itself was attractive enough, though again it's actually a man-made landscape. There was an ironstone quarry here in the 1950s and some of the cliffs and undulations are as a result of this.
At last we found ourselves on a more conventional footpath down to Greetham, passing free-range chicken sheds, grazing Shetland ponies and a new house with its own biofuel generator. We emerged onto Greetham's main street and turned left and almost immediately found the necessary bench on which to sit to eat our lunch. Then we walked to the Church - most attractive, though the spire seems too big for the building.
We retraced our steps towards Exton, but at SK929128 turned left onto a footpath on a diversion away from the Viking Way, to Fort Henry. That footpath went on and on - about a mile in an almost straight line, but eventually we reached Osprey Wood and descended to a little valley. This is only about half a mile from the A1, so it was a bit noisy, but otherwise pleasant enough. We followed the valley along to Fort Henry Lake, with Fort Henry itself on the other side. Fort Henry is an 18th Century Folly, but it's an attractive spot. We took the direct path back to Exton.
We drove down to Oakham. When we were last here in April 2013 we didn't manage to visit the Castle Great Hall, but we did so today. The Great Hall's main claim to fame is its collection of large "horseshoes", with a tradition that when a Peer of the Realm visits Oakham for the first time they donate one of these horseshoes. I photographed some of them, but a condition of being allowed to do so was that I don't publish the photos...so you'll have to visit for yourself. It's fascinating in a slightly quirky way - and free! We had a cup of tea in the garden of Castle Cottage Cafe, then drove home.
